Monday, April 16, 2012

Letter to Ann

6 comments:

It is a good day for making bread. Where shall I start? Do you want to do Mother's recipe? Are you going to use a Bosch or knead it by hand? Whole wheat or white? Ingredients needed: Yeast, white/and or whole wheat flour, sugar/honey, salt, oil, or melted butter, water from the well. Let me know when you are ready for the next step. Or you can simplify this whole thing and buy a package of Rhodes frozen dough, put it in the bread pans, let it rise and bake it. I'll check back after I have planted my carrots.

Photos? Seriously????I'm not sure about any of this, but here goes. This will usually give me 3 loaves. Put your dough hook on your Bosch. Grind your wheat, about 4 cups. In a cup put 1/4 cup not too warm water, some yeast (ok, maybe 2 tsp, or 1 packet of yeast) and a little honey or 1 tsp sugar (this helps the yeast to activate quickly). Put 4 cups very hot water in the Bosch bowl. I use the really hot water because it helps to break down the whole wheat. To the hot water, add 4 tsp salt, 4 TBsp sugar or honey, and "some" oil maybe about 1/4 or 1/3 or 1/2 hmmm I wonder how much I put in but I think the 1/3 cup will be close. Add the whole wheat flour and stir on slow until it is well mixed. Your dough should start to look kind of smooth. Begin adding the white flour - slowly - otherwise you will have white flour sailing everywhere, mixing with each addition. I am not sure how many cups of white flour this will take, so you are kind of on your own here. When my dough gets so it is still really sticky, but not runny, I let the Bosch knead it for a couple of minutes. Then I add more flour until it is almost doughy - then I stir the yeast stuff in the cup and add to the bread. Mix on slow until mixed in, add a little more flour until the dough starts to wipe the sides of the bowl clean and let it knead for a while (5 minutes? 6 minutes? Then I sprinkle a little flour on the kitchen cabinet top, and turn the bread dough out of the Bosch bowl on to the floured cabinet top, knead it a little with my hands into a mound of dough. Then I take my bread rising bowl, rub it down on the inside with oil (olive oil, Macadamia nut oil, or what ever you have - Canola?). With the oil on my hands, I rub the oil onto the mound of bread dough, put it into the bread bowl to rise, cover the bowl with a clean dishtowel and put in a warm corner, where it is out of any draft. I often turn my oven on for a couple of minutes, then turn it off (that part is really important) and tuck the bowl of bread dough into the oven. Just make sure the oven is just slightly warm (as opposed to being cold or hot).Let the dough rise until it has doubled, then pull it out of the bowl and knead it down, put back in the bowl and let rise until doubled again. (This theory has changed a little and many people are just letting the dough rise once and then they make it into loaves, so if you have gotten this far, you may want to try that - or not.) Dump it out of the bowl onto the cabinet top, tear or cut into 3-4 pieces, form each piece into a loaf, put into a greased bread pan, let rise to top of pan, heat oven to 350 degrees, and bake until it is done. Ok, what is done. Maybe 25 minutes? Maybe 30 minutes. When you thump on the loaf of bread it sounds kind of hollow. Now, what have I left out? This really concerns me because I have never made this an exact science. I just add a little bit of this and a little bit of that, mix until I am tired of mixing, and let it rise.When I looked online, I found a recipe that sounded really simple. The link is below and that might be something for you to try. http://www.ehow.com/how_5661574_make-wheat-bread-bosch-mixer.html

There are also a couple of youtube videos that might be helpful. Otherwise, when you come back to Riverton I will come to your house and we can make bread together.

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